Aneninen

Prefer to be a Pro-town Player.

Feel free to help me constructing my Setup ideas: Matrix 14 and Charge Me Up!

About myself...

I arrived at the forum on the 9th of June. So, the astrological sign of my account is actually Gemini. (I meant the Sun. The Asc must be Pisces, if I'm correct. Fascinating, isn't it?)

I've been playing IRL Mafia for more than 20 years or so but IRL experience helps very little in online gaming and I learnt it in the hard way.

How to read Aneninen?

If I

(1) post a pigeon or mention one

(2) talk about my kitty

(3) start fluffing without any reason

(4) overuse the "we should remember" expression

(5) post a shytty theory, complain that everyone ignores it, push my theory over and over, get someone lynched because of it only to realize that I was wrong

(6) launch a conversation about something blatantly irrelevant

(8) post a wall-catchup which is harder to read than an average book about theoretical physics

(9) get annoyed because someone scumreads me or ignores me because of the things mentioned above

...that means I'm either town or I'm lying. But I'm always town, everyone knows that. Even if I'm scum. And there was no (7) in that list. And fairies are nice.

Aneninen's Tells

Here are some tells based upon my personal experience. Sometimes they even work, trust me! ^_^

The Regardless Of Card

If someone's scumreading you (or another player) regardless of everything you post, that player is usually scum (or a very bad townie).

It's similar to tunneling with a major difference. The scumread never changes as the game progresses and everything is a scumtell. I mean, if you think that if you posted the opposite thing, it would be just as scummy in the particular player's eyes, it's a Regardless Of Card. Especially if they call scumtells contradicting things!

This dialogue is a typical (and of course, fictional) example for using the Regardless Of Card:

Chenjesu: You're parking your vote Melnorme, and that's a vanity wagon. You're scum!

Mycon: I'm voting for Melnorme because I think he's the scummiest.

Chenjesu: But you posted in [post number] that you're scumreading Thraddash. If you were town, you'd vote for your scumreads.

Mycon: I'm voting for my strongest scumread.

Chenjesu: Because you know that the Melnorme-wagon won't go anywhere.

Mycon: [posts reasons for scumreading Thraddash, who has a long wagon at that moment, and votes for him.]

Chenjesu: Wow, you've just jumped on the longest wagon! Die, scum!

The Regardless Of Card is often paired with tunneling, the one who plays the Regardless Of Card usually starts agitating others to join the wagon against you.

It's a very useful tell on Day1 – however, it's much easier to spot a Regardless Of Card if it's played against you.

Caveat: on later Days (if it's played against another player) it's not essentially a scumtell. It may come from a town-PR with an investigation result too!

MissMarple-ing

This one works on newer and/or unknown players.

If you experience from a player a certain gameplay/posting style that you've already seen in another game from someone else, those two players often have the same alignment.

Fictional example (and this is one of the easiest example too):

You remember a player from a game who kept vote-hopping all the time, made zillions of short posts, FoS-ed everyone, and as a strong wagon had emerged on him/her got sulky and started tunneling the first name on the wagon. Got lynched early (most probably on Day1) and flipped town.

You're playing with a player who's doing the same – that player is usually town as well.

For doing MissMarple-ing you need to bank on your own impressions: in most cases phrases, post lengths, etc. are worth more than "traditional" tells.

Caveat: MissMarple-ing is not working if it turns out that the player you don't know is an alt of an experienced player. (In that case they're often miming a newbie!) Also, it can't replace scumtells like votes, slips, etc.

(It's named after the star of the Agatha Christie-books: Miss Jane Marple used to find murders by spotting common things between the people involved in a case and people living in her village.)

Parallel Activity Check

If someone's in-game activity is very different from their general activity, they're often scum.

Eg. if a player hasn't posted anything for a day but made 10+ posts in each of their other games they may be scum. Sometimes the opposite works: if someone's very active in the game but does nothing in all of their other games, that may be a scumtell too.

It's not a strong tell in itself but it may be very strong if the parallel behavior's clearly contradicting. (Eg. someone posts that he/she's unable to post for a while because of IRL things while they're posting a lot in another game...)

Caveat: sometimes there are other reasons for the difference. Eg. the player is at LyLo in a long game or the game you're in is stalled.

On the other hand Parallel Activity is very useful if it proves that the player was online at a certain time. (Eg. he/she could have hammered his/her scumread but he/she didn't post anything, yet was very active in another game at the same time.)

Vacuum Activity

The Wikipedia says the following about this concept: fixed action patterns of animal behaviour that are performed in the absence of the external stimuli that normally elicit them. This type of abnormal behaviour shows that a key stimulus is not always needed to produce an activity.

At Mafia, this means the following: townies are scumhunting and they do so even if there are no scumposts present – however, in this case, they start finding scumtells in each others' posts.

So, if there are unusually vehement fights in early-game (typically early-Day1) with only a couple of players involved, and these players flip town later, the scums are probably amongst the lurkers or those players who didn't produce any useful content in that game phase.

Unexpected Gamestall

There are stalls in almost every games. Sometimes the whole game starts out very slow, sometimes a late-Day is passing without any content for days. Even if it's undesired, it's normal.

On the other hand, sometimes the game gets stalled at strange points. A typical Unexpected Daystall situation is the following: it's Mid-game (eg. Day3), there are two strong wagons, both are close to lynch and suddenly the posts get infrequent, the votes are not moving at all. Even prods occur. It's very likely that in a situation like this none of the wagoned players are scum. The scums are in safety so they don't have to build counterwagons, nor pushing a wagon to mislynch – after all, they think being away from a mislynch earns them town-credit. (I know it's not true but many scums may think so!)

Caveat: an early-game stall or a LyLo-stall is never an Unexpected Stall. Also, sometimes a game can get stalled because the most active players are away. So, if you suspect that the game has slowed down only because the most talkative players are not posting anything useful, that's a null in most cases.

Ongoing games

(Do not ask me about those. Even if I'm not alive there anymore ^_^)

Open 634: Sharing is Caring

Micro 600: Experimental Mafia #1 – Mechanics UPICK

Mini 1785B: Killer Instinct Mafia

My games so far...

Because of its length, these can be found in a separate section here: Completed Games

Right now only the first 23 are reviewed; some of the later games may come soon.

For those Stat-Freaks...

Yeah, here's my current record.

	–Won–	–Lost–	–Other–
As Town	16	13	2
As Scum	6	5	0
As Third Party	2	0	0

Impressive, isn't it?

Actually I don't believe in these numbers at all and I'm telling you why.

In This game I was scum and I did my best I could. Killing dangerous town-PRs, WIFOM-izing, guessing the other scum team 2/3 right. We still lost to the other scum team.

In This game I was scum and terrible; apart from my IC post I did very little. While being on holiday, the town lynched me on Day2 without letting me to post anything. My buddy won the game for us later with an excellent play.

I could add a couple of links about getting Lynched or Nightkilled as town very early. Sometimes with, sometimes without good reasons. Need I think the outcome of those games reflect my knowledge?

TL;DR: Regardless of the current numbers, I'm just an average player. That's all.